Founded in 2005 by Dr. Heather W. Hackman, Hackman Consulting Group goes beyond standard “diversity” consulting frameworks by helping our clients address the depth and complexity of deep diversity, equity, and social justice issues in their organization. As we know, no one-time training (or even short term training program) can adequately address the realities of deep diversity, equity and social justice issues in our schools, organizations or companies. As such, HCG helps you avoid the trap of “quick-fix solutions” and instead provides your organization the array of tools necessary for its on-going growth and development long after we have completed our work with you. To that end we provide a broad and deep menu of services to meet the needs of your organization. For more information on what we can do for your organization please see our general list of consulting services below, go to our Consulting page, or feel free to contact us.
How we’re different
Services we offer
Who we are
How we’re different
Hackman Consulting Group is different than many other consulting firms in that we do not do this work as our sole vocation. We are long-term professionals in the various fields we offer training services in and as such, you can count on the fact that:
- We will be honest with you, make the difficult observations and recommendations, and conduct our work from a place of our values, commitment to the work, and your organization’s growth and success instead of watering down our work to protect or extend our contract,
- We will provide the most cutting edge pedagogical tools, training materials, application models and conceptual frameworks drawn from the most current trends in the professional areas in which we work,
- Our training materials are clear, critical and accessible and balance both the complexity of these issues and the need for ease of application and implementation,
- We will engage from a place of hope, enthusiasm, and vision.
Services we offer
- Individual Consultation
- Assessment – we offer both qualitative and quantitative assessment tools for initial, on-going and post-training analysis of your organization’s needs and development
- Training
- One-time – While we prefer to work in an on-going way with your organization, we can offer one-time trainings to meet your basics needs
- On-going – We know that change takes work and time and we therefore prefer to work with your organization in an on-going way to best support your growth and change
- Training-of-trainers
- Training in training implementation
- Training in group facilitation and staff professional development groups
- Conference Presentations
- Key Note Addresses
- Program and Policy Analysis and Development
Who we are
Dr. Heather W. Hackman
Dr. Heather Hackman has been teaching and training on social justice issues since 1992 and was a tenured professor in the Department of Human Relations and Multicultural Education at St. Cloud State University in St Cloud, Minnesota for 12 years before she began focusing full time on consulting. She has taught courses in social justice and multicultural education (pre-service), race and racism, heterosexism and homophobia, social justice education (higher education leadership), oppression and social change, sexism and gender oppression, class oppression, and Jewish oppression. She received her doctorate in Social Justice Education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2000 and has been teaching at St. Cloud since that time. She consults nationally on issues of deep diversity, equity and social justice and has focused most of her recent training work on issues of racism and white privilege, gender oppression, heterosexism and homophobia, and classism. She has published in the area of social justice education theory and practice, racism in health care (with Stephen Nelson), and is currently working on two books, one addressing anti-racism professional development training for P-12 professionals and another (with Susan Raffo) examining racism as trauma and the identification of more complex pathways of healing and working toward racial justice. In 2009, she was awarded a Research Fellowship with the Great Place to Work Institute and has developed corporate training rubrics augmenting GPTWI’s frameworks. She has sat on the board of Minnesota NAME as president, the board of Rainbow Families, and has served on numerous committees committed to multicultural and social justice work.
Susan Raffo
Susan Raffo is currently the Co-Executive Director of the PFund Foundation, a LBGT community fund based in Minneapolis, MN and has extensive experience with non-profit work, community organizing, and organizational change and development. She is also trained in Craniosacral Therapy and Global Somatics body work and co-facilitates with Dr. Hackman the “More Than Skin Deep: Challenging White Supremacy One Cell At A Time” workshops examining whiteness, trauma and healing in the service of ending racism. Susan is also a writer and has edited the anthologies, Queerly Classed: Gay Men and Lesbians Write about Class (South End Press) and Restricted Access: Lesbians on Disability (with Victoria Brownworth, Seal Press), and is also a regular contributor to Bilerico.com. She has received numerous awards including Honorable Mention for the Gustavus Meyer Human Rights Award for Queerly Classed, the Barbara Deming Writer’s Award, and the Community Hero Award from Rainbow Families.
Dr. Stephen Nelson
Dr. Stephen Nelson is currently a physician specializing in the treatment of Sickle Cell Disease at Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He attended medical school and completed his pediatric residency at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia. His pediatric hematology/oncology fellowship was completed at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. Dr. Nelson joined the hematology/oncology program at Children’s of Minnesota in 1993. Dr. Nelson received a Bush Fellowship in 2009 to study the role of racism in the treatment of patients with SCD and has presented the findings of that study, conducted with Dr. Hackman, at conferences, staff development sessions, and professional meetings, and more recently has co-authored an article on the findings with Dr. Hackman.
Debra Leigh, MFA
Debra Leigh has been a faculty member in the Theater and Dance Department at St Cloud State University (St Cloud, MN) since 1989. She is currently the Lead Organizer for the Community Anti-Racism Education (CARE) initiative at St. Cloud State University, an all-campus initiative designed to fundamentally transform racial dynamics and create racial justice at the University. She is also a Training Consultant for the Minnesota Collaborative Anti-Racism Initiative (MnCARI) and conducts extensive trainings in higher educational and community settings on anti-racism and racial justice. In addition, Ms. Leigh is a Consultant for the Omeka Create CommUnity collaborative and works to establish anti-racism as a powerful and consistent thread in the St Cloud community. She has extensive knowledge regarding the transformation processes necessary to move colleges and universities toward their anti-racist goals and is currently working on publishing her research and findings in that area.
Sonia Keiner
Sonia Keiner is a Baltimore-based artist, activist, and community leader in the food justice movement in the U.S. Her work in both major universities and local community groups has afforded her a unique perspective on how to educate, train and organize around food justice and environmental justice issues. In 2006 she earned a Master’s degree in Educational Policy and Leadership from the University of Maryland, College Park and has extensive curriculum development and educational programming experince in both adult education and youth education and leadership development. Several months out of the year she teaches at The Orchard School in E. Alstead, New Hamshire, and is in the process of publishing the curricula she developed there. She also works with the Village Roots CSA in that same community. Sonia is also the recipient of a number of state, national and federal grants for her social justice and community based artwork, and most recently her work has been chosen as one of the permanent exhibits at the new BusBoys and Poets opening in Maryland.